What is iPaaS?

In today's age of digitalization, companies use multiple applications and software to manage their business processes. For more efficient processes, they want to provide data flow between these applications. This situation has created integration needs for companies. Therefore, integration is an integral part of most business processes; if you have an e-commerce site, you will probably need to work with multiple platforms and applications. iPaaS (integration platform as a service) represents a significant shift in cloud application development. 

What is B2B Integration?

Definition of iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service)

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) is a suite of cloud services that enables the development, execution, and management of integration flows that connect any combination of on-premises and cloud-based processes, services, applications, and data, individually or across multiple organizations. Ultimately, this allows companies to improve their products, share data, and provide cutting-edge solutions to their customers.

Large enterprises that work with different systems and applications at the enterprise level use the iPaaS platform, which provides cloud integration solutions to integrate systems and data on-premises and in both public and private clouds. 

How does iPaaS Work?

The iPaaS vendor hosts the application servers and data. It also provides integration tools and middleware. Many iPaaS applications use pre-built connectors, maps, business rules and transformations to define interactions. This also accelerates the development of integration flows across an organization.

Some iPaaS providers offer custom development for capabilities such as modernising legacy applications, creating integrations with social media platforms, business data management, mobile support. 

Imagine that you are going to organize the garden of your house. You choose what happens, how, and where. iPaaS, on the other hand, takes responsibility for coordination with experts such as carpenter for chairs, electrician for lighting, and gardener for lawns.

Why is iPaaS Important?

The value of iPaaS extends to problems related to application integration and data integration. Since the beginning of the computer age, businesses have been using different applications but need these applications to work together. In the traditional integration method, data exchange between different applications was done manually.

In today's modern businesses, this method is time consuming, complex and costly. Modern businesses need integration solutions that provide a seamless data flow between applications, software and systems.

iPaaS is a solution that has emerged to meet the integration requirements of businesses. As an integration platform, iPaaS enables businesses to communicate by seamlessly integrating on-premises, cloud or hybrid applications, automates business processes and allows valuable data to be shared securely.

In short, in a business world where departments such as sales, marketing, finance use different applications to carry out business processes, iPaaS greatly facilitates daily operational tasks.

Features of iPaaS

iPaaS solution provide simple integration tools that do not require advanced technical knowledge or skills. It also provides tools that allow IT professionals to design and deploy advanced integration flows. Among its important features are:

Connectors and Adapters

iPaaS software offers prebuilt connectors, business logic and templates that simplify the process of connecting systems, applications and software without the need for custom integration development.

Low-Code and No-Code Development

One of the most important features of iPaaS solutions is that they offer a low-code or no-code development environment. With drag & drop interfaces, iPaaS enables users to create and manage integration flows and workflows.

Powerful Data Mapping

iPaaS platforms often incorporate data transformation and mapping technologies to enable data harmonisation across systems. Users can facilitate seamless data compatibility and integration by defining custom rules and mappings to transform data formats, structure and values as data flows between applications.

Workflow Automation

Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) organizes the flow of data between multiple systems, applications and software and provides workflow automation.

Developer Tools

The developer tools offered by iPaaS help to create complex integration flows and customise these integration flows.

Real-time and Batch Data Processing

iPaaS solutions have batch and real-time data processing capabilities. In this way, teams are highly successful in meeting different integration requirements. In addition, this feature ensures that data updated or newly entered in one application is automatically updated in other applications, which significantly simplifies business processes.

Lifecycle Management

iPaaS platforms provide a single platform for creating, managing and tracking integrations. This helps users develop integration flows that automate the flow of data between different applications and siloed data sources.

Other features of iPaaS are as follows:

• Robust connector set.
• Seamless integration with API management.
• Authentication and access control based on user directories.

Benefits of iPaaS Solution

Trying to integrate multiple cloud systems can be overwhelming for enterprise IT. Using iPaaS platform for this is getting popular day by day. IPaaS can help businesses build integration easily and quickly thanks to its integration capabilities.  Some of the benefits of the iPaaS solution include:

• It enables better integration results with less workload and less specialized skills.
• It processes and transforms data to suit the needs of your target applications.
• Assigns security responsibilities to the vendor. It provides security by providing built-in monitoring, threat detection, and observability tools.
• It allows customers to solve their problems quickly.·       iPaaS utilizes the advantages of cloud computing and enables cloud-based integration solutions. In this way, it reduces the need for on-premises integration hardware and reduces costs.·       iPaaS solutions eliminate processes such as publishing custom APIs and merging APIs from other services. All of these are already available on the iPaaS platform. This way, businesses use a more secure and efficient solution to manage APIs.
• iPaaS platforms can be used to streamline processes, automate repetitive tasks, and connect applications. Thus, it enables teams to save time and focus on high-value work.

iPaaS Use Cases

iPaaS is used to improve the way teams work and make them more efficient. iPaaS solution can be used in different types.

• Application Integration: It is the integration of processes and applications to enable two or more applications to communicate with each other. In the application-to-application integration type, on-premises or cloud applications can be integrated.
• Data Integration: Data integration facilitates data transformation, regardless of data source or format. It enables more efficient management of data through data extraction, transformation and loading processes.
• Enterprise Integration: Enterprise integration is the use of various integration methods such as API management, application integration and messaging. This process is applied in order to offer enterprise services and assets through APIs or to connect them as services.
• B2B Integration: iPaaS service automates the B2B integration process by overcoming the barriers to meet many needs of business partners such as data security, compliance requirements, real-time data flow, monitoring related to different IT systems and standards. iPaaS supports protocols such as EDIFACT, X12, XML, JSON, and systems such as API, AS2, FTPS and provides real-time data retrieval.

The Top B2B Integration Challenges

Some of the use cases for iPaaS are as follows:

Integrating CRM system with Marketing Automation Platform

CRM and marketing automation platform integration provides real-time data flow between the two applications. This allows sales and marketing teams to make informed decisions based on the data. For example, sales staff can recognise when a potential customer is ready for a sale and offer personalised opportunities to the customer.

Connecting ERP System with CRM

Connecting the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to the CRM system automatically synchronises data between the two systems. This accelerates the finance workflow, eliminates manual data entry and reduces the error rate.

iPaaS vs PaaS: Differences between iPaaS and PaaS

While iPaas and PaaS are technically almost the same, they differ from each other in terms of functionality. While PaaS focuses on only a part of a project, iPaaS provides integration solutions that connect websites, data sources, applications, and interfaces. PaaS is more suitable for large companies with a large budget. iPaaS is more suitable for smaller companies that work with many different applications and need integration between their applications. PaaS tools are more difficult because they require coding knowledge, but iPaaS tools are simpler and can be used without coding knowledge.

iPaaS vs ESB:Differences between iPaaS and ESB (Enterprise Service Bus)

Although the ESB can integrate with the cloud application, it must run on-premises. iPaaS, on the other hand, provides cloud-based solutions. Integrating new applications in a company is easy, as iPaaS provides the ability to create as many connections between applications as desired. However, in a company working with the ESB, the transition to a new application may require long periods of time. Because iPaaS is cloud-based, it allows multiple users to access it. Access by multiple users cannot be guaranteed, as hardware is required for the ESB to work. 

iPaaS vs SaaS: Differences between iPaaS and SaaS (Software as a Service)

Important and basic types of integrations that are commonly used today are iPaaS and SaaS. SaaS applications are widely used by organizations for their day-to-day operations. iPaaS integrates organizations' SaaS data and is a newer technology than SaaS. SaaS applications are services that reside in the cloud. iPaaS connects these applications. Parts of SaaS applications do not reside on-premises. iPaaS applications, on the other hand, enable on-premises and cloud-based services to be integrated.

MIP is an iPaaS solution developed by MDP Group's integration consultants. It is designed to facilitate the integration processes of businesses and acts as a middleware software that offers on-premises and cloud-based installation options. Thanks to its prebuilt integration packages, it both facilitates and accelerates the processes of creating integrations, automating workflows and ensuring data flow between systems. It saves time, resources and labour in integration processes with its comprehensive integration capabilities, strong security features, advanced data integration and transformation.

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